


the unquiet grave

by Mythopoeia



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [104]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: 1800s AU, Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Angband, Blood Loss, Blood and Injury, Body Horror, Eating Disorder Trauma, Eating Disorders, Food Issues, Gen, Gold Rush AU, Hallucinations, Missing scene for within the hollow crown, Nightmares, Non-Consensual Touching, Not that the Victorian context matters much here, Psychological Torture, Shock, Torture, Trauma, Violence, between ch 5 and 6, but there you go, this is not a nice fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-06-26 07:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19763905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia
Summary: This is what happens to a man who is dead: Those left alive cut his body open, to see what was wrong inside him. In secret, he is pulled apart. They mourn him, and they bind him, and they bury him, deep beneath the earth. Maedhros has seen that once before, the total black of the grave, wet and stifling and cold. That is where they lowered Grandfather Finwe’s body, after he was dead.Maedhros is dead too, but all out of order.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TolkienGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/gifts).



> For those following along, this installment of the mid-1800’s AU follows immediately after Chapter 5 but before Chapter 6 of Fic no.81 in our ongoing series: “within the hollow crown”, aka The Angband Part. Please take note of warnings in tags.

The world moves in dizzying lunges, spinning in the firelight: his hands chained above his head and then— _not_ , the bladed horror of Mairon’s making held up to his mouth and then— _put aside_ , the fire’s heat blazing against his skin as an ever-present terror but his limbs, freed momentarily from their bonds, shivering with both the cold and with what Fingon would probably say is _(shock, Fingon whispers, resting the back of his hand against Maedhros’ sweating brow long enough to look concerned, his expression drawn. He says, quietly: A person gravely injured may still succumb to shock. You must keep warm, Maitimo; you must rest.)_

Morgoth draws his hand away, and steps back. The water and the alcohol are both chill upon Maedhros’ skin, crawling like icy fingers down his back and his shoulders, his arms and his neck. Liquid runs into his eyes, stinging, and he blinks but still he cannot clear his vision. Everything that is not the fire is too dark to see clearly, even Morgoth. Even Fingon.

_So ends this day,_ Morgoth says, very calm and smiling. Through the growing fog Maedhros must suddenly strive to force down a rising rush of hysteria, because oh, God, oh _Christ_ there will be another day. Another day, and another, and _another_ , and that’s how life goes, isn’t it, day after day after hateful day and no end and no mercy because Maedhros has never been punished more than he deserves, and _I will walk into the sea, Maglor says, as if his poet’s heart has any real notion of what it means to want death: I will walk into the sea, Maedhros, so don’t you dare—_

When Morgoth’s men release him from the cuffs that held his arms taut, his knees buckle. Harsh hands catch him before he strikes the ground, but even that impact is enough to make the world convulse around him again, mindless, wordless, breathless, blind—

When he knows himself again one of the men is holding him upright while the other is finishing refastening the now familiar shackles around his wrists, around his ankles. They test the locks with brisk tugs that threaten to overbalance him again, but such caution is pointless; Maedhros knows himself again, and thus knows anew that his chances are gone: his strength and his will and his cunning and anything he might have done with any of them, all gone. Maedhros sways sickly in his guard’s hateful grasp, fighting only to remain conscious as his legs tremble, and he knows he shall never run again.

At last the men are satisfied and they shove him forward, and even though his left knee fails again to hold him, this time Maedhros manages not to fall. He is pushed past the fire, through the stooped doorway, out of Mairon’s forge. In the clean dark of the hallway outside, the air is colder—so much colder, and his shivering which had begun in the firelight wrenches through him in yet crueler spasms, his chest so tight he cannot seem to breathe. Still, Maedhros feels something pitifully close to gratitude, as the door closes behind him, shutting out both the firelight and the face somehow pale still in the firelight, watching him from beneath dark hair, with dark eyes.

(Fingon does not follow him into the hallway.)

Once the door is shut, the men guarding him try to force him down the sloping passage, one man gripping his elbow and the other pulling at the heavy chain at his wrists. But Maedhros would be a full head taller than each of them, if he stood to his full height, and those last few steps left him spent, wrung out and shaking, weak with the loss of blood and useless adrenaline both. He cannot even stand, now that the firelight and the metal and the dark eyes are gone. With his ankles chained, he struggles for one more step and staggers badly, pitching forward as his leg buckles again, this time twisting beneath him. The man at his left once again catches him as he falls, but that awful pain as the man hauls him upright again, with hands careless of the wounds on his back and shoulders, is the last piece of the world left to him before even the torchlight goes mercifully dark. 

Mairon is gone, and Fingon is gone, and Maedhros is gone, too.

(This time, Morgoth is not here to bring him back.)

*

_Oh, Maitimo, his mother exclaims, reaching for him piteously. Oh, your hands. You are so cold._

_He wants to tell her not to worry, but his shivering is too violent to hide, nearly too violent to force words from. The sight of her tears wounds him like a knife, but for some reason he cannot bear to weep with her, forcing the tears back._

_He is terrified of weeping._

_Where are your gloves? Nerdanel asks him, her strong fingers closing about his wrist. He stares at her hand, at his hands. He is thirteen; his wrists are thin as a boy’s wrists still, for all that he is growing. Melted snow drips down his back._

_I outgrew them, he lies. The true answer is he gave them to Celegorm, because Orome has requested Celegorm accompany him on hunts to mind his dogs, and Orome sends Celegorm home with rabbit, squirrel, quail, even venison, once—all charity their family desperately needs, all carefully given without the necessity of having to see the pity in the hunter’s eyes._

_(Not that Maedhros has eaten much of the scant meat, when they get it; Curufin is still very weak after being so ill, and the twins are babies yet, and cannot understand famine, and Maglor—)_

_Now, the tears come. He tries to lift his hands to swipe them away, but he cannot lift his arms. His mother looks up, and her face looks not quite how he remembers it, because—because it has been so long, such a very long time, oh, God—_

_Help me, he whispers, the hunger settled so deep in his bones it claws like nausea, the pain waiting for him somewhere in the cold, patiently, looking in at the windows with dark eyes._

_On the other side of the door._

_My beautiful boy, Nerdanel says, not seeming to hear his mangled voice, the words intelligible through the slow-rising pain filling his throat—his mouth—his—_

_She is smiling, but he cannot remember what her smile was like._

_I love you, my coppertop._

*

(He comes back.)

*

He comes back to the sensation of searing heat against his skin, red light through his eyelids and his tacky lashes: there is fire pushed close to his face, so close he flinches back. The movement jars his injuries, and he moans, faintly, as he struggles to remember where he is—not Formenos, not Mithrim, a _forge_ , not Athair’s forge—

“He ain’t dead,” a man declares, satisfied. Maedhros does not know the voice. It is not—It is not Mairon. Not Morgoth. _Not the forge, then._

He is lying on icy stone, the cold its own kind of burning, his wrists and ankles still weighed with metal that burns also, freezing against his skin. Even with the fire, the cold air is agony in his raw throat, sharp in his laboring lungs. Every shiver brings more pain, but he cannot still the desperation of his body. Morgoth said he would not die from the flogging, but maybe he will die from the cold. Maybe this is what dying feels like.

But the man holding the torch does not seem concerned, and Morgoth had said—

Maedhros flinches away from that, too.

He forces his eyes open, as the torch is withdrawn. He is back in his cell, or at least one identical to the one he had been dragged from so long ago, a lifetime ago, before—

The man with the torch straightens, but there is another voice, doubtful, from the vague direction of the door. 

“He looks dead. You certain?”

“Look you,” the man grunts, and then he sets the toe of his boot lightly over Maedhros’ outstretched fingers, where his hands—still shackled—lie on the stone floor near his face. 

Maedhros has not yet gathered enough of himself to feel strong enough to move, and his hands are numb; he cannot feel them. But he watches as his fingers twitch; as his hands curl weakly, trying to get away from the threat of yet more pain.

He thinks he is still frightened of pain.

“See? He moved.” The man at the door huffs, appeased, but the boot does not step back. Instead, the man contemplates him in silence for a long moment, and Maedhros stares at the steel-toed boot so near his face, and his tears have already dried in his stinging eyes. He has no strength for anything more: not self-pity, not shame, not anger. Even the fear seems far away, for a body that is not his, for a person that he does not love. 

He does not beg. The movement of the firelight above him throbs through him like a heartbeat, in the silence. After a moment Maedhros can not count, an eternity of trembling at a knife’s edge, the boot does lift, leaving his fingers unbroken. 

Only then, does he realize he was holding his breath.

The men leave him there, gasping. With them, goes the light. 

*

The darkness is absolute, no different with his eyes open or closed. Maedhros drifts, startling back into wakefulness in fitful bursts, the only constant in the black the pain that does not ease, does not leave him. Once, he tries to move, but even trying to push himself up on his hands rips such agony from the wounds on his back—he collapses, with a sound he would shamefacedly call a scream, had he not screamed in Mairon’s forge, when the whip—

(Once, while working side by side on repairing a fence back in Mithrim, Maedhros had seen the marks on Rumil’s back, roping and ruinous across his shoulders, his spine, his ribs—)

(He had not been strong enough to look long.)

One by one, their faces impossibly clear in the pitch-dark of his cell, his brothers come to try to console him. One by one he sends them away, unable to bear Maglor’s tears, and Caranthir’s prayers, and Amrod—no, _no, God, please, not Amrod, not—_

Celegorm comes to sit beside Maedhros as he chokes on a stifled sob, pitying himself and hating his own pity, but when Maedhros tries to shove him away, Celegorm does not move. Instead, he just shakes his head and shrugs. 

_I’m not Maglor,_ he reminds Maedhros calmly, settling back against the stone wall. I _don’t mind._

_Fuck,_ Maedhros gasps as the agony rises in a new wave and then falls back, the curse blurring in his swollen mouth. Celegorm does not flinch. He leans forward, examining Maedhros’ back. He whistles low: _That looks fucking terrible, Maitimo._

_I’ve had worse,_ Maedhros replies, slurring, and Celegorm smiles at that because Celegorm always understands when Maedhros is joking, even when his joking is a lie, even when his joking is desperate and wrong because Maedhros hasn’t ever felt pain worse than this, never, not in all his life—

_No you haven’t,_ Celegorm says, still grinning and raking back his long yellow hair, blinking his yellow eyes. _But you will, Maitimo, you will—_

*

Maedhros wakes alone, in darkness, choking on blood. On his blood, because even though it has to have been hours now since Morgoth’s study his mouth is still filling with it, the hole where his tooth was ripped from his jaw still steadily weeping. He spits weakly, and it’s all he can taste, all he can smell. When Athair was dying—he bled from the mouth, too. 

(Maedhros is not dying.)

Maedhros stares into the void where Celegorm’s face had been, his heart shuddering against the cage of his ribs, shivering. He cannot feel his hands, cannot feel his feet, cannot feel his face. He would not know he even had a body, anymore, if it were not for the—the pain, the _pain_ —

All he can think of, shying away from the horrors of Morgoth’s study and of Mairon’s forge, is how terribly beautiful the mountainside had looked beneath him, so far beneath him, and beneath the dawn. How clean the air had been, on that ragged cliff, and how gentle the early sun.

_Oh, God, the sun._

He should have fallen. When given the choice, he should have fallen. He thought then of Maglor, and the broken bones they would return to break him in turn, but what shall they return now? His hair—his blood—the nail they ripped from his finger, the molar they tore from his jaw. In the darkness behind his closed eyelids, his father’s eyeless skull grins back, and Maedhros retches again, gasping, coughing his own blood up from his empty stomach and clotting lungs. His throat burns from his screaming.

Maglor would have wept over his bones, and then he would have buried them. What will he do with a tooth? Or, yet more—with an ear, with the skin flayed from Maedhros’ back, with an entire finger cut from his hand? A sudden horror grips him, of the certainty that they shall take him from himself in pieces until nothing is left. Already, he feels empty, but that emptiness is no solace because he knows it is a lie; he knows now they shall delight in taking everything from him it is possible to give. 

Everything, except his life. 

_(No infection, Morgoth had said—)_

*

_(Death by infection is the cruelest death, Fingon says solemnly, holding the thin knife thoughtfully up to the thin light falling through the window. That is why Olorin says we must wash our instruments, to keep the wounds clean. It is not merely a kindness; it is a necessity, if the patient is to heal well.)_

_Maedhros laughs, his breath coming oddly short, as he lolls his head sideways just enough to get a better look at his cousin’s face. Fingon’s brows are furrowed in his dear, familiar look of concentration, the one that makes him look both much older than his nineteen years and very much a child. He has been explaining Olorin’s work on disinfection for the better part of the last hour, and Maedhros has been listening as intently as he can, to make up for his missing the exhibition four days previously._

_(No—not missing it, but running from it heedless, fleeing from a monster only he could see, and he did not even warn Fingon about the devil stalking those halls, was not even man enough to tell his cousin why he was leaving him behind—)_

_Maedhros swallows and his tongue feels wrong. His teeth feel wrong. He cannot catch his breath._

_“After much experimentation,” Fingon is saying, the blade sharp and slim and beautiful in his hands, in the clean sunlight, “Doctor Olorin has come to the conclusion that to sterilize both the wound and anything that may come in contact with the wound is best. An example: in an operation, one should wash the incision site clean both prior to and after surgery is performed, and the tools are also, as I have said, to be kept clean. A saltwater solution may suffice, if a satisfactory druggist is not present, but we have found carbolic acid to be even more efficient. Bandages must also be changed frequently, so that sickness cannot grow in the old blood.”_

_Fingon sets the surgical knife down, very carefully, and offers a hesitant smile, nervous like Maedhros knows he was not at the exhibit hall, not even in front of all those scholars and strangers and gawkers. Fingon is an excellent speaker, and his passion for what he loves is infectious. Everyone who heard him speak, that day, must have loved him. Maedhros still cannot quite breathe, but when Fingon smiles at him tentatively, looking for reassurance, Maedhros smiles back._

_Maedhros loves Fingon. It is a love he feels sometimes guilty over, and sometimes like an ache, and sometimes like a comfort he does not deserve._

_In this moment, as he struggles to catch his breath, it hurts. The sight of his cousin hurts. Or maybe it is not that which is hurting him, but instead—_

_(Death by infection is the cruelest death, Fingon said.)_

_What did Fingon know of kindness or of cruelty?_

_(Fingon had been—Wrong—)_

*

Once, light returns to Maedhros’ prison, and he is hauled up from fevered confusion to sit propped by unkind hands, the faces of his enemies blurred with the agony of moving and the smoke from the lit torch. He cannot lift his arms, cannot lift his head. He is helped to drink water, ice cold and salt-sour, held to his bleeding lips in a tin cup. Swallowing requires more coordination than he remembers, and the freezing touch of water to the raw-nerved open wound in his jaw is a blinding horror. Still, he thirsts; he drinks. 

He will not, however, part his teeth for the bread they try to force him to eat. They offer him a tin cup of gruel, also, but Maedhros has passed the threshold of starvation now, and the very thought of food is enough to make his throat close upon lurching nausea, a cold sweat breaking upon his brow. How long does it take, for a man to die of starvation? Of blood loss? Of thirst? Morgoth said he shall not die of infection, but Maedhros has not eaten in days now, and surely, surely he cannot survive much longer if—

(He cannot quite bear to refuse the water.)

The men grumble and threaten, and one cuffs him across the face; Maedhros can not really hear them. Can not feel the blow. His hands are gone, his legs will not move, his face does not feel like his face. The cold has crept inside him now, building a home inside his ribs, carving out a door. If he can hold on only a little while longer, the work will be done, surely. A door goes two ways; Maedhros will be glad to leave this body to the chill, and step outside to freedom, whatever that may be. 

( _Heaven_ , his mother promised him, when he was young. He does not believe in _that_ , any longer. But even if he were to walk through death into nothing but a void, the void would not be _here._ )

Finally, the men drop him back to the cell floor in frustration, and he does not unclench his teeth even to scream but still the sound he makes, when his savaged shoulders strike the stone, the awful, shameful _sound—_

The men mutter over his head, and one feels his forehead, sounding displeased about whatever he finds there. Maedhros’ breathing breaks apart in shallow whines, in his throat; the man’s hand is sick and horrible against his crawling skin but warm, and he shudders beneath it. The men leave without addressing him further, abandoning the heel of bread on the floor but taking with them the cups, and the light, and their grating, wordless, senseless voices. 

Before they go, one man covers him with a heavy shroud. Or—not a shroud, a horse blanket, thick and rough and stifling on his straining lungs but not cold, the—the only thing in this dead place, that is not cold. He shuddered beneath the warmth of a hateful hand; now, he weeps beneath the warmth that was a friend’s. 

He recognized the russet pattern blocked across the grey wool, in the last receding glow of his gaoler’s torch. This blanket had been Galway’s.

*

_Galway, warm arm about his shoulders in a bracing embrace, smile shaped like Morgoth’s smile or his own, what difference is there now? Jem with two eyes one eye two telling him You’re a brave one, coppertop, you’re a right devil—_

It is difficult to track faces in the dark. It is difficult to understand voices amidst the pain. Maedhros sleeps, and wakes, and knows not the difference, trapped in a liminal suffocating space of memories that will not leave him, confused and nightmarish and cruel. Floating, feverish, nailed into his tortured body by the pain that will not let him go, he rasps for breath, spits out blood, sobs into a single grimy hand. This is what dying feels like, please _God_ , this is what dying feels like. _God is always just,_ Nerdanel often reminded him, throughout his aborted childhood. _He never gives us more to bear than our strength can hold, Maitimo. Is that not a comfort?_

(Maedhros cannot bear any more than this. _So ends this day,_ Morgoth smiled, and there had been fire and metal both in Mairon’s forge, and _infection is the cruelest death, Maitimo, is that not a comfort?)_

His heart beats too high in his chest. In the midst of his panic, like surfacing after drowning, Celegorm comes back, wretched and grieving and not like himself at all. Maedhros is reminded of how Celegorm had wept when he shot that man, all those months and miles ago, outside the tavern. This is how Celegorm looks, when he has killed. 

When something is dying. 

_I saved you best I could,_ Celegorm tells him, sniffing and dashing the back of his hand across his eyes. _I know it wasn’t enough._

_Hush,_ Maedhros whispers hoarsely. His words are hardly words, but Celegorm understands because this—this is important. _Be careful, Celegorm, you can’t—can’t let them hear you._

Celegorm’s hand lowers from his eyes. He straightens, every line of him taut and poised with sudden urgency, trembling on the edge of a leap.

_No,_ Maitimo, he says, you _cannot let them hear_ you.

*  
Maedhros wrenches awake with a gasp. His cell is filled with shivering yellow light. In the shadow of the near wall, predatory and patient, is Mairon.


	2. Chapter 2

“How many names you say, when you are dreaming,” Mairon says, softly. He is dressed again in his black leathers and cuffed shirt, a kerchief knotted at his throat. His forge apron is gone; his gloves are gone. With his face and hair washed, with his hands resting calmly upon his knees, he could almost be addressing Maedhros at a cafe in Manhattan, or across the table at one of Grandfather Finwe’s garden parties, his voice modulated and civil and his hands graceful in repose. 

His hands are immaculately clean. Maedhros realizes he is staring at them, as he might have watched the hands of an opponent on the fencing green, so long, long ago, anticipating violence so he that he might fight back.

He cannot fight back.

Maedhros forces his gaze elsewhere, but he cannot focus, and he is shaking again, and he knows that Mairon sees. As the silence stretches thin, Mairon leans forward, very slightly.

He repeats: “So very many names.”

Maedhros says nothing. He tries to push himself up, but all his wounds have stiffened, his tortured muscles locked rigid. He gasps.

“Let me help you,” Mairon says, still quietly, and eagerly he flashes forward, seizing Maedhros by the arms and dragging him upright, slamming him back against the wall. He smiles, when he feels Maedhros jerk beneath his touch, and smiles wider when Maedhros gags with the sudden clarifying shock of pain as his head and shoulders hit the unfinished stone. Maedhros coughs for breath, and Mairon strokes the side of his face, the ragged tufts of his hair, with a touch horribly like Morgoth’s: a studied puppetry of kindness. 

“That is better,” Mairon purrs. “Now, what were we discussing? Oh, your dreaming. It is ungentlemanly of you to beg mercy from so many people, and yet not from me.” His tawny eyes flare wider; he speaks with Maedhros’ own voice, all the inflections of his speech mimicked with perfect cruelty. His face is as hollow-blank as any other skull. “ _Finrod—Mamai—Uncle—Grandfather._ ” He smiles again, his breath short and hissing between his teeth. “Your grandfather, I know, is dead. My master made sure of that. What of all those others?”

This is—a different kind of pain, a different kind of shame. Maedhros cannot remember what he dreamed, cannot remember their faces. Cannot remember what he—what he said. Does this still count as betrayal?

“What do you think?” Mairon whispers, sharper, sharper. ( _A knife sheathed is still—a knife,_ Maedhros thinks, fleetingly, and gags again, but there is nothing in him now but blood and water.)

“Tell me what you think, Feanorian. Are they dead?”

Maedhros’ vision is swimming.

“No,” he manages to whisper back. His voice cracks. “I am.”

Mairon looks amused, if the devil can look amused. He raises one long, thin forefinger, and touches the very tip of it to Maedhros’ bandaged chest, poised like a knife, as if he could part linen and skin, flesh and bone beneath with nothing but his bare hands, if he only chose to. Slowly, he spreads his fingers, presses down, his touch spreading like blood over Maedhros’ skin, pushing his injured shoulders against the wall. Maedhros does not move, does not—breathe. There is bile, mixed with the blood in his throat. His breathing is all wrong.

His cowardly heart is beating fast, too fast, frantic against Mairon’s hand, and he knows Mairon feels the panic struggling there because he raises his eyes to meet Maedhros’ again, his breath fever hot against Maedhros’ face, and his eyes are just as they were in the ringing silence of the forge, when he stood and stared at the ruin his red hands had wrought.

“How frightened you are,” Mairon whispers, “for a dead man.”

The movement of the firelight is sickening. Black bleeds in at the edge of Maedhros’ vision but he fights back that escape; he cannot lose consciousness in front of Mairon he cannot—

“My master says you must not die,” Mairon says, through teeth too long for his smile. “My master says you must eat. If it were left to me, I would cut your throat open, so you might have no need for swallowing. But I will not betray my master’s trust. The men he sent before failed, you see. And so, in his wisdom, he has sent me.”

There is blood on Maedhros’ tongue; there are tears in his eyes. 

He cannot—

His mother used to coax him to eat. His father used to shame him until his plate was clean, no matter how little he kept down after. 

Maglor—Maglor used to nag, to beg, to bully. _Eat, Maitimo, or I won’t either, and then we shall both go to bed hungry._

_Eat, lad. You need your strength._ That was—That was Galway, in the forest, and _You’ll want it,_ Gothmog warned with a warning that was like a taunt: _You’ll want strength, where you’re going._ And Galway is dead, Galway is headless, Galway’s hair is bloody at Mairon’s belt, _Eat a little, Maedhros—_

There is the tin cup of gruel again on the cell floor, close to Mairon’s knee. 

*

_(I put extra rosemary in this, Fingon declared proudly, because I know you like rosemary. Try it, Maitimo, and tell me if it needs more?_

_The flavor was overpowering, as though Fingon must have unearthed an entire garden plot into Indis’ best copper pot. The texture in his mouth was all wrong, mealy and lumpy with roux. There was, as was common with Fingon’s cooking, at least a full tablespoon too much salt._

_Maedhros looked at Fingon’s hopeful expression, standing surrounded by the enormous disorderly clutter Fingon had made of their grandfather’s kitchen, and he took another spoonful of the terrible soup, and he loved it.)_

*

Maedhros looks at the thin gruel, so thin it looks like scarcely more than clouded water, and his throat is so tight with panic he cannot even—

_Breathe,_ he tells his body, frantically, as Mairon crouches just there, watching, waiting, patient now but how much longer—

When he manages to force air back into his lungs it does not sound like breathing. His head swims. His hunger is a pain he cannot feel, in the midst of so many other pains; he cannot find it, cannot follow it. Does not want it, oh God, does not want—

( _Please,_ Maglor begged him once, in tears: _For me?_ )

Mairon—

—strikes him across the face, and Maedhros cries out, raising his chained hands clumsily to protect his head. The strain of lifting those manacles tears at his back and he has no strength left; his hands shake and shake and drop uselessly to his lap, arms trembling. He tries instead to turn his face aside from the next strike, even though he knows it is useless, because Mairon is _right there—_

There is no second blow. 

“Master Bauglir,” Mairon repeats, voice distorted through the heartbeat hammering in Maedhros’ ears, “desires you to eat. I would have thought you knew better, now, than to refuse him.”

Maedhros forces himself to turn back to face the hateful voice, and Mairon is sitting there poised again as still and serene as though nothing has happened, his hands still clean and quiet on his knees. 

Clean and twitching, very slightly. 

“I thought,” Mairon continues, the words quiet and only very slightly trembling, “that you would know not to refuse _me._ ”

Maedhros gropes with numb fingers for the tin cup. His hands shake so badly he can scarcely hold it, and he tries to count his breathing, to think of anything, anything but _this_ , anything but his torment and his tormentor together, and the food he must swallow, if he is not to die.

He wants—he thinks, maybe, he wants to die.

He knows he does not want more pain. 

( _Merely try it,_ Fingon coaxed brightly. _One taste, Maitimo, just so you may tell me if you like it._ )

Maedhros raises the cup to his lips, shivering. His lips part, and he forces the gruel past his teeth, into the mess of blood and bile and pain that is his mouth. His lips shut. 

All he can taste is blood. The gruel fills his mouth, cold and wet and heavy, and Mairon watches, unblinking, the way a cat might watch a rabbit, smiling at something it knows will inevitably end mangled and dead but not—yet—

“Swallow,” Mairon says, softly. 

Maedhros’ sweat is ice upon his skin. His mouth is filled with blood. He swallows, in absolute despair, and then—gags—chokes, with his closed throat, and—

Mairon’s hand is clamped over his mouth, over his nose, shoving his head back against the wall; Maedhros retches again, drowning, and stares wildly into the eyes of his tormentor, so close to his. He tries to thrash, to rip free, but he has no air, he needs _air_ , and Mairon’s other hand strokes him lightly, tenderly, along the side of his spasming throat. 

“I said,” Mairon repeats, grinning: “swallow.”

Maedhros tries. 

He tries to obey Mairon, like he tried to obey his father, tried to save his brother, tried to defy Bauglir, tried to endure the forge.

It never matters, how he tries. 

He _cannot_ swallow. He cannot force his nauseous horror to relent, cannot calm his faithless body as it rebels, retching and choking and _dying_. He cannot swallow, until his vision is darkening and his mind is nothing but a scream and in the last throes of suffocation he gulps, horribly, for air that is not there.

Mairon lets him go, and he falls to the side, unable to catch himself, hitting the stone floor hard with his shoulder. He gulps again, and drags in the freezing air, but it is as cold as water, he is still drowning, _still_ ; the shock of pain and air and the liquid still caught in his throat sets him coughing again and then hacking, and he vomits up everything he just swallowed, and more besides: blood and acid, water and gruel. Somewhere above him, Mairon curses, and then he is dragged up again, still coughing, trembling and gasping. His hands jolt uselessly in their heavy shackles, as Mairon shoves him back against the wall again. He cannot quite see anything, except Mairon’s eyes, wide and mad and aflame with hatred.

“How dare you,” Mairon hisses, shaking him. “You loathsome creature, you disgusting, crawling _thing_ , how _dare_ you—“

Again, his head slammed against the wall. Again, the tin cup shoved against his teeth as he gasps for breath, but it is not his hands that hold it now, but Mairon’s. He struggles, but he cannot get away, he will never get _away_. Again, the cruel hand covering his lips, stifling his nostrils, and he swallows desperately and vomits up into his closed mouth, swallows again, sobbing for air—

Again, the blurring promise of death coming to him through agonies. Again, Mairon releasing him only on the very brink of oblivion. He remains pinned to the wall this time, but that makes no difference; his vision swims, his throat is afire, he heaves sickly, and he tries, he _tries_ to force the panic down.

He keeps down very little. 

Twice more, he is made to eat, and twice more he fails. Mairon grows increasingly irate, and Maedhros who fought at first wildly now fights hardly at all, shivering and breathing and choking and spitting, hot and cold and rank with sweat. He is trapped in a fevered nightmare, caught between Mairon’s cruelty and his own body’s failings, and still he does not die. 

At last, there is only a single mouthful left in the cup, and Maedhros waits dully for the torture to resume, his stomach cramping uselessly, feverish and weak. Mairon regards him narrowly, all his face alight with his hatred and his disgust, and Maedhros cannot feel his face again, cannot move his hands. The cold runs through him with the fever, and he shudders once, his nausea twisting—

Mairon sets aside the cup, and crouches close to where Maedhros fell, after the last time, leaning close over where he lies trembling at the base of the wall. He considers a moment, long hands twitching, and then he covers Maedhros’ nose again, covers his empty mouth. The rush of shock Maedhros feels, to be spared the cup, is shamefully near to gratitude. His lungs burn from habit; his throat works with base animal desperation but he is too wrung out to fight, now. He stares through salt-wet lashes at Mairon’s death-mask face leaning over him, and sees the terrible hatred there, and _a knife is still a knife_ because Mairon wants him to hurt, yes, but he also wants him dead. Mairon is torture with an ending. Mairon will be glad, to see him die.

( _Remember this_ , he thinks, because he knows he is not dying; _remember—_ )

This time, Mairon does not release him as the world blacks out around him and the pain in his lungs burns white. 

This time, Maedhros dies. 

*

(Maedhros never dies.)

*

Something brushes his neck very lightly, the barest stroking scratch along his throat, beneath his jaw, and instinctively he swallows.

Swallows liquid, because there was—there was something in his mouth— 

A quiet laugh somewhere in the black over his head; accented amusement. 

“Interesting,” says Mairon. Maedhros goes rigid; he coughs once, and his stomach twists with nausea, but he is too weak. He coughs and then cannot stop coughing, each convulsion wrenching the wounds in his back. His body is mapped by injury and abuse and he is back again, trapped again, in stone and metal and blood and bone. Breathing hurts. _Being_ hurts. He tastes the hot bile in his throat and swallows it down, and his body wrenches once but then is still. Panting, gasping with open mouth, he does not open his eyes, cannot bear to—

No: It is worse, not seeing. He forces his eyes open and there is Mairon, the now empty cup in his hand, grinning with his awful good humor restored. Maedhros’ head hurts with a splitting pain, and he is sickened, realizing how Mairon was touching him, coaxing him to swallow when his mind was not yet returned enough to life to know what his body did. He retches thinly, but exhaustion weighs heavy and he does not have the strength anymore to be sick. The slightest movement renders the pain in his head an unholy stabbing; the light of Mairon’s oil lamp spins as the world spins, and Maedhros is not sick. Mairon, seeing, laughs again, satisfied.

“Rest now,” Mairon tells him, his mock-calm returned. His hand rests hot against Maedhros’ jaw, then falls away. “He has promised me I shall have you again, so rest easy. You are not dead. You shall not die, here.”

He does not bother taking the empty cup with him when he leaves, nor does he draw the blanket over Maedhros’ body again from the tangled heap it had fallen into as he struggled. Maedhros is scarcely alive enough to know when he has gone, but the light lifts and recedes, and the clashing to of the cell door as it shuts strikes like a hammer against the pain chiseled through his head, and he gags with it, eyes closing again. 

Gags, but is not sick. 

It does not feel like a victory.


	3. Chapter 3

There is metal at his mouth, freezing cold and biting against his shredded lips. Maedhros twitches from his unquiet stupor to take what he is given, and feels fear like a scream deep behind his ribs before he remembers what he is afraid of. But the metal is only another cup, and in it is only more water, mountain-cold and metallic itself, and he has been here before. He drinks, and swallows, and does not vomit it up. The pain in his head is blinding, and touch is a torment on his feverish skin, no matter how gentle or kind; a weight shifts against the back of his skull, because someone is cradling his head in their arm, lifting him so he does not choke as he drinks, and Maedhros hears how he moans at the pain as his head is moved, as the bandaged wounds on his back pull—

“There you are,” Morgoth says encouragingly and from a great, drowning distance away, his voice as careful and kind as his touch. “Come back, Maitimo; there you are.”

_Come back_ , as though Maedhros could find any escape here. He startles, to hear that voice again; his eyes open and he coughs, a little of the water spilling, but Morgoth does not seem to greatly mind. Instead he sets the cup aside, and lifts a corner of the blanket to dab at Maedhros’ lips. Maedhros tries to turn his head away, but he is confused, and anyway surrounded; when he turns away from the gentle, cruel hand he finds he is staring close at the brocaded pattern of Morgoth’s black waistcoat, at the silver watchchain he wears, delicately wrought, strung across the black.

“A gift from my brother,” Morgoth says, noticing where Maedhros’ gaze has fixed. “Ill suited, but well-meant; you know how brothers are.” There is a sneer in his deep voice; he lifts his free hand to touch the chain and scoff.

“And yet: still a fine gift, despite himself. You recognize your father’s work, do you not? He later told me how he requested Finwe to commission it, the old fool. Your father never knew the trinket was meant for Manwe, let alone for me. It would have been a fine thing to see his face, if he ever learned.”

It is so difficult—so difficult to breathe. Morgoth’s hand returns, to rest heavily on Maedhros’ straining chest, and he makes a vague sound of disapproval.

“Calm down, boy. You are in no interrogation chamber now; Mairon is not here. I had thought you stronger than this, when we last spoke in my study.”

The arm eases from behind Maedhros’ head and he is laid back, not ungently, onto the icy stone floor. He is half-covered again with the blanket that had been Galway’s, but it is fouled now with his own vomit and sweat. He bites his lip, to keep from making a sound as his back touches the stone, and Morgoth makes a vague sound of disapproval as he reaches around in the darkness; as there comes the sound of more water pouring, the cup being refilled.

“Come, Maitimo; let us speak again, a little, now that you have learned some civility. Let us speak again of Feanor, for I have so many questions yet, to ask. There is much I still do not know, about his final days, and you were there, at the burning of Utumno. Did you see your father shot? Yes—you did, I see it in your eyes. I confess myself disappointed, Maedhros, that you did not defend your father better.”

This: the ripping open of another wound, sharp and seeping. Maedhros shuts his eyes and curls into his manacled hands as best he can, because he doesn’t want to hear this, doesn’t want to _see_ —

“Did you see your father die? Did he say anything, when he went?”

Silence. Maedhros is not going to be sick.

“Well, then. Maybe you do not remember. Maybe you are too ill, now, for memories. There will be time enough yet, for that.” A cold, gentle touch, caressing the side of his face, and Maedhros flinches beneath that hand but does not have strength left for anything else, only a sob, half-voiced and quickly stifled. Morgoth’s cold hands move to Maedhros’, and his hands are pulled away from his face, leaving his grief exposed.

He does not open his eyes.

Morgoth tuts overhead. 

“Oh, Maitimo, look at what has become of you. Look what your father made of you. What a pity, that he left us behind so soon! He wronged us both, the day he burned my garrison. He was selfish, to take his life in hand so rashly, without a thought of what his death would mean. See what ruin he left behind. What disappointment.”

Maedhros’ breathing turns to sobbing again; he cannot help it. Softly, Morgoth’s cold hands caress his shoulders, the back of his neck.

“But it is unjust, perhaps, to blame the son for the father’s failings. You have suffered for your father’s pride, and your father’s rash wrath, even as I have. How he failed us both! Have you cursed his name yet?” Morgoth asks gently, bending close. “Have you cursed him yet as I do?” 

(Has he?) 

No. Maedhros would curse his own hands first, his own heart, his own soul; he would curse the God his mother taught him was merciful, first, but Athair—

“Well! It may be you still love him,” Morgoth says considerately. “You cannot, I suppose, help what you were taught. A boy may grow to be anything, if he is only taught. You have seen what Mairon is, already, and that was the best I could make of him, after the ruinous lessons he had when he was young. And meantime your father had you in his house from birth! _There_ is an injustice, Maitimo; there is a cruel chance indeed. Under my tutelage, you might have been great.”

_No_ , is the word Maedhros clings to, because it is the smallest, strongest word he can remember through the pain. _No, no, no_ : and he did not think he spoke aloud, but Morgoth falls abruptly silent. 

“Open your eyes,” Morgoth says suddenly, his sonorous voice honed sharp. “Look at me when I speak to you, boy.”

Morgoth’s hands are white in the gloom of the cell, large and greedy and horribly disembodied in the dark, severed at the wrists by the black cuffs of his double-breasted jacket. Where Mairon had brought in an oil lamp for light, Morgoth has only a candle set upon the floor, and one hand flutters about the tiny flame like a moth, a moment, before the candle is lifted in its holder and brought close to Maedhros’ face.

The light dazzles his eyes, stabbing, and he flinches from it.

He does not close his eyes. 

“Dear me,” Morgoth grieves, stooping close. “You _are_ suffering, aren’t you. How dreadful. And—yes, a fever, despite all my precautions!” 

This, as he sets the candle aside and touches the back of his corpse-cold hand to Maedhros’ brow once again. Maedhros does not pull away from the loathsome touch, has no strength left for revulsion; he can scarcely feel his own body, anymore, beyond the agony inside his skin and the cold outside it. But still: through the fever and the dark and the pain he feels the kindness in Morgoth’s hand, gentle on his brow, then his cheek, then the thrashing pulsepoint beneath his jaw, and he doesn’t want to hurt any more but more than that he doesn’t want—doesn’t want— _doesn’t_ —

He doesn’t move. 

“I have heard how you rejected the care I offered you, after our last interview.” Morgoth’s voice is still pleasant, his crawling touch still soft. Maedhros breathes raggedly and keeps his eyes open and tries to see nothing. It is not so difficult, as the cell is still very dark and Morgoth himself is all in black, dark upon dark in Maedhros’ fevered vision. 

“Did Mairon hurt you?” This, abruptly. Questions are perilous; Maedhros knows that. That was a lesson he learned long before Angband, long before the bridge. 

Morgoth’s fingers go still upon the side of Maedhros’s face, the cold thumb resting tipped just slightly into the hollow beneath his eye. “I do not mean what was done in the forge, Maitimo. I mean when I sent him to you after, here in your little room. I like to think I can trust him, you understand, but he does take some minding. He was on orders to do you no more harm.”

_He has promised me I shall have you again_ , Mairon had hissed. Mairon and his knives and his hot-tempered hate. 

Mairon, who wants to rip out Maedhros’ tongue and to press red iron to his skin, who wants to cut out his eyes and cut off his hands, but who also, ultimately, wants him dead.

This is a thing to remember: All Mairon’s trophies are dead.

“No.” The word drops like a die cast into the dark, falling from a gambler’s palm. Maedhros hears it as though it did not come from himself, but his heart is hammering, unsteady and loud. His throat, moving, feels burned raw. “He did not hurt me.”

Morgoth says nothing, but his fingers wander, lightly, to press against the cut at Maedhros’ lip; at the surely dark bruising beneath his left eye, where Mairon struck him.

“Poor boy,” Morgoth says, deep and soft. “So afraid, so quickly. Well! The good to come from this unpleasantry is we may now attempt again to be more civilized with each other, you and I. You know how I hate to resort to violence; you remember how I strove so vigorously to reason with you, before you answered me with animal force. I don’t want to hurt you, Maitimo. Remember that: I do not take pleasure, in seeing you hurt. Perhaps, when you feel more recovered, I may ask you again my questions, and you may answer me then with proper courtesy, as a man might. Does that sound agreeable, Maitimo?”

Maedhros shudders. It is partially the cold, and partially the fever, and partially something else.

“Poor boy,” Morgoth says again, more gently. “Come, lad, you need not freeze there upon the stone. Let me help you—hush, hush. Calm down, Maitimo, have a care of your hurts.”

Maedhros cannot help the sound he makes when Morgoth lifts him, cannot help the blood that drools from his mangled mouth over Morgoth’s horrible white hand. But Morgoth does not punish him; he cradles him gently, resting Maedhros’ ruined back against his own black waistcoat, guiding Maedhros’ head to fall back against Morgoth’s broad shoulder. Maedhros retches with the pain, with the dizzy spin of the dim-looming shadows tilting over and around him, with the struggle to breathe as Morgoth holds him like—like a father might have, could have, _did_ —

Maedhros wants to die. 

“Listen to me, Maitimo: for I am more considerate than Mairon is—than even Thuringwethil ever was,” Morgoth says gently in his ear, smoothing the ruined, ragged stubble of his hair back from his sweaty forehead. “Mairon would have had one of your eyeteeth, I think, but I am trying, currently, to teach him mercy. A molar gone, what of it? It can heal, and you shall not even miss it, I promise you. And it can end there, Maedhros: with mercy. No one need to ever be able to tell what we have taken from you. I give you my word on that. Things can be different, going forward. 

“Mairon thinks you are being deliberately difficult. Mairon tells me you are insolent, and that you have not learned. I disagree; you are trying to follow orders, aren’t you, Maitimo? You are trying very hard to do as you are told. I know you are. Mairon has never been whipped, has never been afraid; he does not understand. He thinks you are stronger than you are; I know you cannot help your weakness. Mairon expected too much from you, as Feanor expected too much. This is how we shall move forward together, you and I; I also shall expect things of you, but never more than is in your power to give, and you shall try with all your strength to give me what I want. That is simple enough, is it not? Even if you fail, I shall not punish you, if only you try. You can try to please me, can’t you, Maedhros?”

The pine-sap stink of the wax Morgoth wears slicked into his hair is overpowering, this close. Maedhros is dizzy with it; his eyes water and he wants to be _away_ : from the smell, from the pain, from the hateful touch of Morgoth’s cold hands, from the warmth of Morgoth’s body against his back, warmth that his own body wants to cling to in relief from the prison chill but that he loathes more than anything. This is not even a return to Mairon’s tortures, this is nothing but false-boned kindness and he cannot _bear_ it. 

Morgoth takes one of Maedhros’ hands in his own, lifting it to the candlelight as though it is a curiosity to examine. It is the hand Mairon pinned down, and took pliers to, and _tore_.

That near memory, rewoken, is enough to wake in their turn both jolting panic and resharpened fear. Maedhros tries to pull his hand away from that powerful grip but he is not strong enough, he—is not strong enough, was not strong enough, won’t be—

“Breathe,” Morgoth murmurs, tilting his hand to better inspect that open place where a nail used to be. He does not look up from the marred finger, but the calming kindness is there in his voice all the same. Maedhros—had not realized his lungs had stopped, but once reminded, he drags in one breath, and then another, shaking, shallow. He cannot help it. Why, why is he still breathing?

“My word, that _is_ unpleasant to look at, isn't it.” Maedhros cannot see Morgoth’s expression, but there is a smile in his voice. Maedhros has learned, since he was dragged into the dark, what that smile looks like even without seeing it.

Morgoth brought more into the cell with him than fire and water only: he lifts up a cloth wetted in the cup, and sets to scraping away the grime and blood from Maedhros’ open nailbed. Maedhros bites his lip to keep from screaming, and his hand jerks against Morgoth’s hold. He makes no sound, but still he feels the laugh in Morgoth’s chest, as the white cloth turns slowly red. 

“You are so tense! Relax, Maitimo, be brave, now. It hurts a little, I know, but it will help you heal.”

The tar-thick stink of creosote, as Morgoth dabs a little onto the cleaned wound, burns. Maedhros loses time; he comes back to himself panting, wet-eyed, staring as Morgoth finishes applying sticking plaster to his finger, as Morgoth leans back satisfied. 

“There we are. See how easily we may make things right again? Your finger shall heal, the nail regrown. It can be that simple, Maedhros, you and I. All you must do is understand that you owe Feanor nothing. Is it not a relief, to be free from him, free to choose your own path, not to suffer needlessly in his name? That is what I am trying to offer you: freedom. Would it not be a relief, to stop fighting? You need not hate me, Maitimo; I have done nothing for you to hate me for. In all our dealings, I have taken great pains to ensure you are allowed your choices. You cannot blame me, if your choices have been . . . Poor.”

_(In his mind: a cliff. In his mind: falling to his knees when he should have fallen from the edge, and the way his heart felt ripped from his ribcage, as he was dragged away.)_

Maedhros must have made some sound, or Morgoth must understand him too well, because the monster sighs, as though just remembering.

“Ah, of course. Your unfortunate brother. I assure you that it is no fault of mine, that little Amrod is dead. I gave no order, Maitimo; why would I? Such a small, harmless thing as he was. Such a useless—hush, hush, calm down, lest you hurt yourself further, and undo all my good work! It is true, you know, and not a cruelty; whatever did he ever do for you, compared to all you did for him? Quite useless, here in the West. Why ever did your father bring him? It is more a marvel that the other one is still living, than that the youngest one is dead.” 

Maedhros was not prepared for the rage that flames up in his throat, at those words, at that voice, a pain more awful, for a moment, than the agony of his body. He wrenches away, but Morgoth catches him before he can fall; Morgoth holds his hands down, as he struggles against those caging arms. He tries to strike at the monster’s face by snapping his own head back, but the sudden, violent movement is too much and the world goes white, the fevered dizziness rushing up like ice in his blood. When he regains himself, he finds that he is crying, weakly and without tears, into his enemy’s shoulder. Each sob scrapes cruelly out of his tortured throat. 

“ _Fuck you,_ ” he barely manages to gasp, because with his blurred vision he cannot see Morgoth’s face, and he is too raw-raging, in his grief, to remember that he is not brave. His words are not words, around the pain in his mouth. He spits them anyway.

“ _Fucking child killer_ ,” he cries. Morgoth’s hand moves, soothing and insistent, against his shoulders, and he screams—coughs—screams again. 

Morgoth leaves off pressing against his mutilated back, and turns him in his arms to cradle him like—like Maglor held him, after he woke in Thuringwethil’s—after he woke in that bloodied bed and saw his father there like a ghost in the doorway—when he saw his father and wanted to beg him _come back, come back, don’t leave me here alone—_

He does not see Morgoth’s face and then he does, impossibly close, white against the darkness of the cell and those two eyes like cut out holes, showing nothing but darkness again. Maedhros cannot recoil, cannot do anything, because has overspent the last of his strength; his vision is failing, spotted with phantom lights, phantom darkness closer than other darkness, closing in. _Useless._

“Child killer?” Morgoth repeats in mockingly slow bemusement. The pressure of his voice hurts Maedhros’ ears as though he is underwater. “You were a child younger than Amrod, when I first met you. And look, see what you have done to yourself since. It was not I, but your god’s mercy, then, that drove the little one off the cliff. Wouldn’t you say so? Maitimo, do you think he saved his soul?”

*

_Here, Amrod. Your hands like—so._

_Now I lay me down to sleep,  
I pray the Lord my soul to keep._

_If I—die, before I wake,  
I pray the Lord my soul to take. _

_Amen?_

_Amen._

_How was I? Was I good, Maitimo?_

_You were very good._

*

“Do not weep, Maitimo,” Morgoth hushes, finger held to Maedhros’ lips. “When you are well again you will be ashamed, to remember you wept.”

*

This is the count: Elfin Grandmother Miriel is dead. Grandfather Mahtan, writ red and large and blurred in his memory, and Grandfather Finwe whom he cherished and served and did not protect—both lie long-buried in their churchyard graves. Twenty-five men killed, at the bridge and after. Galway who was loyal, and Jem who was brave.

Athair, who never knew how to be afraid.

Amrod, who had just enough time to know to run.

*

_I think a visit to the infirmary is in order, my lad, Morgoth rumbles jovially, smiling his skull’s smile. His hand has returned to stroking through the ruin of Maedhros’ hair as he cradles his broken body close: it is an unholy echo of how his father used to hold him when Maedhros was as yet an only child; of how Maedhros used to hold his youngest brothers, when he was so small that even his godson’s baby body was enough to fill his entire lap with warmth._

_Morgoth will not let him go. Morgoth will never, never let him go._

_Never fear, that nightmare voice croons, as Maedhros’ body fails his mind and he falls asleep at last unwilling in the arms of his childhood horror: You are not as strong as I had supposed, but we shall not let you die._

_Never fear._

*

(This is what happens to a man who dies: Those left alive cut his body open, to see what was wrong inside him. In secret, he is pulled apart. They mourn him, and they bind him, and then they bury him, deep, deep beneath the earth. Maedhros has seen that once before, the total black of the grave, wet and stifling and cold. That is where they lowered Grandfather Finwe’s body, after he was dead.)

(Maedhros is dead too, but all out of order.) 

(All that is left, is to die.) 

*

When Maedhros wakes shackled in the stiff infirmary bed—When Maedhros remembers Morgoth’s measured care, and Mairon’s leashed but trembling hands—he knows what he must do.

Somewhere in this unquiet grave there is a forge burning hot with hatred, filled with fire and metal, waiting.

When Maedhros returns there, he will be ready.


End file.
